Royal Bank

ARTICLES ABOUT ROYAL BANK BY DATE - PAGE 4

Richa Naidu, Simon Jessop and William James and Reuters | March 23, 2014

(Reuters) - BlackRock Inc , the world's largest money manager, warned that Scottish independence would bring about "major uncertainties, costs and risks" in Britain, becoming the latest company to join the debate on this year's referendum. Scotland will vote on whether to end its 307-year union with England in September. The British government has been campaigning fiercely to keep it intact, arguing that both countries are better off together, while Scotland's nationalists believe a split would give them the economic freedom to prosper.

NEW YORK/ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse Group AG has agreed to pay $885 million to resolve claims by a U.S. regulator that the Swiss bank misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into buying mortgage-backed securities that later went sour. The settlement announced on Friday would resolve claims in two lawsuits filed in New York by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the conservator since 2008 for the government-controlled mortgage companies. It is the ninth settlement that the FHFA has reached in litigation that began in 2011, when it filed 18 lawsuits over some $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities, an investment product at the center of the recent global financial crisis.

LONDON (Reuters) - A radical shake-up of the UK's pensions and savings industry could be the trigger for suitors to look afresh at deals in the asset management industry, even if they can be hard to secure. Up to 15 billion pounds ($24.76 billion) a year, by some estimates, could find its way to the mutual fund industry after the government relaxed rules forcing pensioners to buy an annuity at retirement in Wednesday's budget. At the same time, finance minister George Osborne raised the limit on how much people could save tax-free in Individual Savings Accounts to 15,000 pounds a year and loosened the rules around what people could invest in. "The outlook for asset managers in terms of new asset flows is pretty positive," said Ed Dymott, head of business development for Fidelity Worldwide Investment, particularly given 70 percent of UK personal wealth is held by a generation that is set to retire over the next 10 years.

LONDON (Reuters) - Investment banks must take tough decisions to quit ailing business areas and should reduce their balance sheets by $1 trillion - or almost a tenth - to lift profitability, an industry report said. European banks face a particularly challenging outlook and are likely to continue losing market share to big U.S. rivals, according to the 2014 Wholesale & Investment banking Outlook by Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman, released on Thursday. The report said investment banks needed to cut their balance sheets by about 8 percent, even after cutting them by a fifth in the last four years, and to redeploy another 5-7 percent to business areas that were more profitable.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron urged Scots on Friday to heed warnings from the head of the Bank of England and business leaders about the uncertain consequences of voting for independence in a referendum in six months' time. Cameron told the Scottish Conservative Party conference in Edinburgh that the government faced a "monumental battle" to keep Scotland as part of Britain at the September 18 referendum. Dismissing accusations from Scottish nationalists of trying to bully Scots into voting against independence, he said the vote was a major life choice, and no decision should be taken without full awareness of the consequences.

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp sued 16 of the world's largest banks on Friday, accusing them of cheating dozens of other now defunct banks by manipulating the Libor interest rate. The global financial institutions broke certain swaps contracts they had entered into with the now-closed banks, by separately colluding to rig the Libor rate to which the contracts were tied, the FDIC said. Some of the banks accused in the lawsuit, including Barclays Plc and UBS, have already paid some $6 billion to resolve charges from U.S. and European authorities that they worked to manipulate benchmark interest rates.

* Canadian dollar at C$C$1.1107 or 90.03 U.S. cents * Bond prices mixed across the maturity curve By Solarina Ho TORONTO, March 10 (Reuters) - The commodities-linked Canadian dollar was slightly weaker against its U.S. counterpart on Monday as Chinese exports unexpectedly sank in February, spurring investor caution over the world's second-largest economy. Chinese exports fell 18 percent from a year ago, swinging the trade balance into deficit. The Lunar New Year holiday was blamed for the sharp decline, though the data followed a series of factory surveys this year that hint at softer demand in China and abroad.

By Chris Vellacott LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) - Banks are failing to rein in excessive payouts for staff below the boardroom level despite a public backlash against a bonus culture blamed for contributing to the financial crisis, say leading investors. While higher levels of engagement by shareholders and political pressure since the crisis and the Libor rate-rigging scandal have seen some top executives waive or take smaller bonuses, lower ranks have not been subject to such restraint.

LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) - British life insurance and pensions provider Legal & General has bought a portfolio of 55 properties let to state-backed Royal Bank of Scotland in a 550 million pound ($920.18 million) deal, it said on Thursday. The portfolio, which includes private bank Coutts's headquarters in central London, comprises of 41 retail and banking units, 10 office buildings and four industrial sites across the UK, with one asset in Dublin. It is predominantly let to RBS until 2037 and was bought from British property group Telereal Trillium.